


Detention

by virmillion



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Bullying, M/M, but of like The Lightest Possible Variety, what a bunch of dorks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-27
Updated: 2018-02-27
Packaged: 2019-08-19 22:14:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16543292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virmillion/pseuds/virmillion
Summary: remember that time i posted all my old fics at once and found one that actually contained fluff? yeah me neither





	Detention

“Sit up, heads up, shut up,” Virgil hears, accompanied by the sharp rapping of something inches from his face. His eyes shoot to their resting position of half-open, still trying to return to sleep. He looks through heavy eyelids at the person leaning over him, his nostrils flaring with heavy breaths. Virgil lets his focus blur, settling on the vague outline of a plastic ruler vibrating in front of him, held down by a white-knuckled fist. “If you fall asleep again, you’re getting another week, got it?” Virgil rolls his eyes a little, flashing a thumbs up and burying his nose back into the sleeve of his hoodie.

“I’m stuck here every Saturday for the next month, hit me with your best shot.” Virgil squeezes his eyes shut tighter at the sound of a pen scribbling on paper, barely flinching as said piece of paper gets tucked under his arm with a huff of angry breath. He shoves it in his hoodie pocket.

“Anyone else want to try something? I will keep you here all year if I have to, so don’t try anything funny.” The receding footsteps indicate one of two things to Virgil—either the teacher gave up on corralling the pack of kids surrounding him, or he didn’t hear one of them mockingly whisper, “I will keep you here until four.” Maybe both. Probably both. He supposes it wouldn’t really matter either way. Teacher’s gone, sleep is here, and he’s got nothing better to do.

“Psst, Virge,” a voice behind him whispers. He doesn’t bother hiding the scowl as he turns around to glare at the source. Some kid in a hoodie and jeans, not unlike his own, with an outstretched finger, ready to jab Virgil in the back if he didn’t look back quick enough. Remy, if memory serves Virgil correctly, in and out of detentions for goofing off in class, when he bothered to show up at all. The general eye roll from Virgil is enough for Remy to assume he’s good to continue. He jerks his head toward the opposite corner of the room, at a kid by the door staring silently at his desk. Remy elbows a couple of kids next to him with a sneer. “What a loser.” At the general consensus of laughs and jeers, Virgil turns his attention back to his twiddling thumbs.  _ None of your business, don’t interfere, the kid can handle himself. _

__ It takes a combination of spitballs, wads of scribbled paper, and hissed curse words to force Virgil to look up again. Unsurprisingly, the gang of kids gathered around him are snickering over a piece of paper, which they flip up to show Virgil—a crude drawing of the kid under a rain cloud. He releases a heavy sigh, forehead creasing in an effort not to cuss them out before scraping his chair back from the desk. By some miracle, he got one of the only chairs that didn’t attach to its desk, a small convenience that made the resulting winces all the better. Virgil draws out the obnoxious screeching of metal on tile, pushing the chair unnecessarily far back before rising and turning his back on the pack of kids. Ignoring the grumbles and arguments, he moves for the empty chair beside the kid in front, flipping up a choice finger behind him as he goes.

The kid flinches slightly as Virgil collapses into the free space, letting his neck crack and his head recline. Besides a quivering breath, Virgil’s unwilling companion remains silent and otherwise frozen, staring intently at his desk with his hands pressed against his legs, shoulders hunched up to his ears. Virgil crosses his legs over the desk, watching the bits of dust flake off and fall to the floor. As he kicks the heels a couple times, dislodging more dirt, the noise is drowned out by the annoyed muttering at the back of the room. The disinterested teacher doesn’t even look up, probably muttering to himself about how he isn’t paid enough to put up with this nonsense.

Virgil grabs a crumpled piece of paper from his back pocket—a faded receipt for headphones—and smooths it out on the desk, using his other hand to snatch the black pen at his feet. Stealing writing utensils since first grade, his primary method of acquiring them without expending any real effort or funds. He draws a circle in the middle, straightening out the wrinkles a bit more to stall, then looks back at the kid. At the hunched back, the wrinkled nose, the chewed lip, it’s not a hard guess to tell this kid is trying not to cry. Frankly, even if his eyes weren’t welling up, the furrowed eyebrows and set jaw would be a dead giveaway. The kid sniffles harshly once, twice, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment to regain whatever composure he thinks he has.

Probably against his better judgement, Virgil drops the receipt doodle on the kid’s desk, not watching to see how he reacts. The snickers and groans start anew from the back of the room. Not important, not loud enough to distract Virgil as he waits patiently for some sort of response from the sniveling kid. Even a careless swatting of the paper off the desk would be better than the radio silence he’s gotten so far.

It’s not until his eyes have nearly drifted shut, cheek resting against his fist, that Virgil hears a meaningful clearing of a throat, feels a piece of paper jabbing his sleeve. He yawns, shakes the sleep from his head, and looks down at the paper, to the kid, back to the paper. The kid remains motionless, looking at a knot in the wood of his desk, but his back seems looser, somehow. A pair of eyes added to the circle Virgil drew, these done in blue pen to contrast his black ink. He adds an undefined nose and smile below them, passing the paper back without looking. The kid is quicker this time, adding a body outline with a simple T-shirt and pants. Virgil smiles, relieved that the kid seems fine with his utter lack of artistic ability, before filling in the clothes with swirls and lines. The dark decoration gleams brightly under the harsh fluorescent lights of the classroom ceiling, set back behind the bright blue outline.

With a few giggles and wake-up nudges, an unremarkable piece of something resembling art takes shape, a simplistic person against a background sky of nonsense scribbles. The kid pulls a piece of notebook paper from his backpack on the floor, scrawling something on the top line and handing it over to Virgil.  _ That was fun, thanks.  _ Virgil smiles at the loopy handwriting before writing back, albeit in messier and smaller font,  _ What a future we have in artistry, huh?  _ The kid pokes his tongue out between his lips, fidgeting with the collar of his shirt for a moment instead of answering. Virgil nods off, head propped on his hand again, as the kid doodles away. A row of little flowers and snowflakes greet him upon awakening, each different from the next. He grins, adding a row of flipping hearts below it, then scratching out,  _ name’s Virgil, I’m here for falling asleep in class too much. You?  _ The kid hesitates much longer this time, teeth tearing away at his lip again. Virgil fights the sleep trying to pull him under again, cursing the low buzz of the lights overhead that always lull him to unconsciousness. Finally, the paper makes its way back to his desk, another few lines of blue doodles staining the page.  _ Patton. That one hall monitor caught me without a pass, and when I tried to make a pun about it, he thought I was making fun of him, so, detention.  _ Virgil doesn’t miss seeing the dried drips of water around the answer, but he certainly ignores them in favor of not making the kid—Patton—uncomfortable.  _ That blows. _ A small laugh escapes Virgil at the balloons and tissues Patton doodles around his response, enough to earn an angry glare from the teacher.

It’s as Virgil is scribbling out a fat dragon that the teacher slams his binders on the desk, finally garnering the attention of the pack of jerks at the back of the room. He points to the analog clock on the wall, then to the door, before collecting his coffee and papers and hightailing it out of the classroom. Patton smiles slightly, peering over Virgil’s shoulder at the half-finished doodle. The latter adds in a few final details before swiping the sheet from the desk and standing carefully, ignoring the cracking in his joints. Naturally, instead of leaving well enough alone, he complements the sound by cracking his knuckles, just for good measure.

“Loser,” Remy mutters as Virgil pulls Patton out the door by his wrist. Patton wobbles dangerously, the bag nearly tipping him over to fall back onto Remy.

“Wow, where’d you get that one, a laffy taffy wrapper?” Virgil replies, slamming his shoulder into Remy’s without so much as a backwards glance.

“Sorry you had to ditch your friends for me,” Patton mumbles as they exit the front door of the school. “I should’ve just kept quiet, sorry.”

“Patton, you need to shut your mouth right this second.” Virgil stops, letting Patton ram into his back from the momentum. “I went over to you because I wanted to, and those guys are snots anyway, got it? If I wanted to ignore you, I would have, but I didn’t. Clear?”

“Clear.” Patton offers a smile, a bigger one this time, more genuine. “It was nice talking with you today, or writing, I guess?” Virgil nods, stepping off again once he’s certain Patton isn’t about to put himself down anymore. “D’you wanna do it again sometime? Maybe this Saturday?”

Virgil offers a wry grin, pulling the new detention notice from his pocket and waving it under his nose. “Love to, but I can’t. Priorities and all, or lack thereof.”

“Right, right.” Patton gazes at the ground, quiet for a moment as the pack of kids from detention pass, jostling each other and snatching at bags.

“I’m free Sunday?” Virgil tries, determined not to let this kid slip through the cracks of this hellhole of a school. “That coffee place down the street?”

“Perfect, I’ll see you then.” Patton waves, turning to head for his own house, before Virgil stops him with a hand on the shoulder.

“Hang on, let me just, gimme a sec, okay, here,” he says, passing the receipt and the page of writing to Patton. “See you then.” Virgil waves back as Patton disappears around a building corner, wondering fleetingly how long it will take him to notice the phone number scribbled on the bottom in black ink.


End file.
